Exploring Virtual Teaching Environments

While learning management systems (LMS) of yesteryear (e.g. Moodle, Blackboard, Sakai) remain powerhouses of centralized control for educators, most of the teachers I speak to are no longer interested.

It’s as if they are saying, “Ok, why does virtual class management have to be so difficult? I want simple solutions that help me get my work done rather than force me to learn arcane workflows.” As a result, we’ve seen educators eschew solutions like Edmodo, ever on the hunt for the easiest, most powerful tool.

Consider new classroom tools as the latest iteration of learning management systems. For example, Moodle and Blackboard provided one iteration, Edmodo and Schoology another, and now Google Classroom and Microsoft Classroom are the latest iteration. Let’s explore this most recent iteration.

Update: Since this blog entry was first submitted for publication, both MS Classroom, OneNote Class Notebook and Google Classroom have released powerful new updates that may not be reflected in the feature list below. For example, OneNote Class Notebook now has a “take it on the go” feature. Click links above for more info about each. More video tutorials will be added below to illustrate features so be sure to check back from time to time!

What Is Classroom?

The goal of any virtual classroom system, or LMS 3.0, involves providing a suite of online tools that empower students and staff to connect, create, collaborate, and facilitate organization. Microsoft Classroom, like Google Classroom, offers integrated word processing, spreadsheet, slideshow presentation, and cloud storage. Yet it goes one step further with OneNote Class Notebook, facilitating the grading of assignments and full integration with MS Classroom Assignments. MS Classroom, by itself, is a powerful classroom collaboration tool. But add OneNote Class Notebook,and you’ve made it simple for educators to distribute assignments, draw/use digital ink to create and annotate content (e.g. an algebra teacher writes the pythagorean theorem with a stylus or the tip of her finger on the screen and OneNote’s “ink to text” feature converts it into typed text). Then you can add audio comments and feedback to student work along with digital ink feedback.

Features and Benefits

Both Google and Microsoft have a wealth of features. Let’s take a peek, adapting this support document to facilitate a feature comparison. I’ve also added components (e.g. MS Snip/video links to the MS Classroom side or links to Google’s support page) to the “Yes” response if they include items readers new to MS Classroom may be unaware of.

Add materials to your assignments, such as YouTube videos, a Google Forms survey, PDFs, and other items from Google Drive. Teachers and students can draw on, write notes, and highlight documents and PDFs in the Classroom mobile app.

Keep students organized—Classroom creates a Calendar for each class, adding assignment due dates to the calendar. Students can view upcoming work in multiple places.

Yes, create assignment due dates and see those appear in calendar immediately. Students can view upcoming assignments, as well as review completed ones. Students also have a “Mark Done” option they can select and that turns the work in.MS Classroom also features a private “chat” between teacher and student for feedback regarding a particular assignment.

Keep teachers organized—Review student work, including assignments, questions, grades, and previous comments. View work by one or all classes, and sort by what needs reviewing.

Yes, one place to review assignments, student comments/questions, as well as the option to view items in OneNote Class Notebook.

Yes. Review student work, including assignments, questions, grades, and previous comments. View work by one or all classes and sort by what needs reviewing.

Grade quickly and easily—Sort students by first or last name, see who has turned in work, draft grades to share with students later, add private comments when returning work.

Yes.

Yes. Sort students by first or last name, see who’s turned in work, draft grades to share with students later, and add private comments. Plus, add annotations and visual feedback to student work in the Classroom mobile app.

Transfer grades—Export final grades to spreadsheet format or to a CSV file for upload elsewhere.

Affordable and secure—Like other services, Classroom contains no ads and never uses your content or student data for advertising purposes.

Yes.

Yes.

One sign-in—Teachers and students can sign in to Classroom with a single sign-on.

Yes.

Yes.

Professional development —Get your teachers using Classroom quickly with free online training.

Yes. Professional learning online is available and a click away in OneNote Class Notebook.

Yes.

Personal data protection—Classroom is covered.

Yes.

Yes.

*More on MS School Data Sync:“School Data Sync imports school roster data from the school SIS (like PowerSchool) and synchronizes it with Azure Active Directory and Office 365 so that Classroom (or any other application) can use the roster data to create online classrooms, have context about the student, and even enable single sign-on.

Conclusion

These two third generation LMS players are quite evenly matched, offering school districts who are looking for an alternative to Google Classroom that relies on robust, familiar MS Office tools a rich alternative. Given the speed with which Microsoft is working to add new features, both should reach parity soon. However, OneNote Class Notebook, OneNote Learning Tools, Collaboration Space, and the ability to quickly disseminate handouts and resources to students via the Content Library give Microsoft Classroom the edge. What’s more, OneNote serves as a great ePortfolio solution that can integrate with a variety of learning management systems, including Google Classroom. Depending on your needs, there is no reason why your district or school couldn’t mix and match the various tools (e.g. Google Classroom + OneNote Class Notebook, MS Classroom with YouTube) to get the desired results.